WHEN Darlington Covered Market opens tomorrow morning, for the first time in 151 years, there will not be a member of the Blair family selling fruit and veg.
The market complex, which included the town hall and the town clock, was only 11 years old when the first Blair, Jack, came in from Haughton to sell his produce in 1875, and since then, they’ve seen remarkable changes.
For instance, Jack probably didn’t have a stall, only a corner from which to do his trading – stalls did not become a permanent fixture until 1920.
In those days, the market was a round-the-clock operation, with some stallholders opening up at 7am and others not beginning to trade until 3pm. The climax of the day was the ringing of the auction bell at 9pm which signalled that unsold stock could be sold off at bargain prices, although some days trading continued until midnight.
The council chamber in the roofspace of the covered market with two grand windows which looked out over the Market Place. This picture must date from the late 1920s when Darlington had an all-male council. Picture courtesy of Peter Giroux (Image: Peter Giroux)
In the 1920s, the market underwent a dramatic change when a large council chamber was somehow squeezed into its roofspace. A staircase, with five flights, was clagged to the south-east corner of the market building so councillors could hold their important discussions amid surprisingly comfortable surroundings in the roof.
A 1970s view of Darlington Covered Market complex showing the exterior flight of stairs in the south-east leading up to the council chamber in the roof. The two grand windows in the chamber can be seen in the roof looking towards the Market Place and the area of the council chamber is marked by the four ventilation funnels which stick up. Picture courtesy of Peter Giroux (Image: Peter Giroux)
In 1938, figures suggest that in the covered market, there were 37 butchers, 35 fruit and vegetable stalls, 15 poultry dealers, seven sweet stalls, six florists, six grocers and six toy stalls.
Joe Blair, the father of Robin and Keith, with his granddaughters Emma and Sarah in the Barmpton Lane market gardens (Image: The Blair family)
In 1939, Joan Bell, seven, was recuperating with her grandparents in Louisa Street, off Yarm Road, after being treated for scarlet fever in the Hundens isolation hospital, and her grandfather took her for her first visit to the covered market. In 2013, she vividly told Memories: "The day was damp and misty, and the naphtha lamps were hissing beneath the canopies of the stalls, which were stacked with all manner of goods.
"There was wool and colourful material for clothes and curtains – women were rifling through remnants to make children's clothes.
An advert for JJ Blair & Sons (Image: The Blair family)
"I remember distant male voices shouting out their wares, but one stall caught my attention. A man was sitting on it with bare feet which were covered with awful corns. They looked dreadful: every toe had corn and there were corns around the side of his feet. How he walked, I do not know. The stallholder covered the corns with black ointment which he guaranteed would remove the corns. I wanted to stay with the spectators to see if it worked, but grandad hurried me on.
"We continued to meander between the stalls, passing homemade toffee and cough sweets till we reached the pet stall.
"As well as pet food, there were budgerigars and canaries in cages, but best of all were the large cardboard cartons or crates that contained baby rabbits, kittens and puppies. I spent a long time bent over them, stroking the little creatures, trying to make up my mind which I liked best, although I knew I couldn't have one.
"When at last grandad prised me away, we walked past a man who was roasting potatoes and chestnuts. At the centre of the Covered Market was an octagonal shaped stall arranged round a stone that grandad said was theMarket Cross. The stall was composed of incubators holding eggs and little chicks that cheeped as they endlessly scurried around. I walked round and round the stall looking for cracked eggs, and stopping to watch the chicks hatch.
"Then grandad said it was time to walk back home for tea..."
On the JJ Blair & Sons stall, from left: Clarice (Robin and Keith's mother), Robin, Joe (Robin and Keith's father), Keith and his baby daughter Emma (Image: The Blair family)
It was into this exciting, almost magical, environment that John Joseph Blair introduced his sons, Robin and Keith, and placed the famous name, JJ Blair & Sons, above the stall. Robin made his debut as a baby in 1945, sleeping in a drawer under the stall while his mother served customers, and in 1950 was paid a shilling after completing his first official shift. He would go on to become the face of the stall – indeed, the face of Darlington market – while Keith would go on to run the family’s four acre market garden off Barmpton Lane.
In 1954, the boardings came off the West Row façade of the market. They had been put up after only a couple of years of it opening to keep the smoky town centre air out – it had a tendency to collect under the market’s roof. The removal of the boards allowed shops and cafes to take over the façade.
A 1965 picture of Darlington Covered Market and the then Town Hall with the council chamber still in the roofspace (Image: Staff)
During the 1960s and 1970s, Darlington council kept dreaming up all sorts of ideas to modernise the town centre by demolishing the historic buildings, including the market, and replacing them with concrete and glass boxes. There was the Shepherd Scheme which morphed into the Tornbohm Plan which was defeated by a public inquiry in 1973 which labelled it “the worst possible municipal vandalism”.
The Blairs’ beloved market lived to trade another day.
The only concrete-and-glass box to leave the drawing board was the new town hall, which was completed in 1970 and left the old town hall, and the council chamber in the roofspace, redundant.
The Covered Market in 1977 before the restoration work began, with the five flights staircase up to the council chamber on the left and the main entrance to the market covered over (Image: Unknown)
In the late 1970s, a massive restoration of the market began, stripping the whole building back to its wrought iron columns and removing the council chamber. Even the Second World War air raid siren was removed from its place on the roof.
A great view from the town clock in June 1978 showing how the roof of the Covered Market below has been removed to get the council chamber out. In the distance on the left is the new town hall and in the centre of the picture is the Central Hall which today would be obscured by the Dolphin Centre (Image: Unknown)
Inside the Covered Market in January 1978 as the massive refurbishment begins with the removal of the council chamber in the roofspace (Image: Unknown)
The stallholders, like the Blairs, had to trade in the open market for more than a year until, on February 7, 1979, the mayor, Councillor Sheila Brown, ceremonially reopened the covered market.
The programme for the reopening of Darlington Covered Market on February 7, 1979 (Image: Unknown)
Robin and Keith Blair on their stall with the mayor of Darlington, Cllr Sheila Brown, on February 7, 1979, when the market reopened (Image: Unknown)
She was photographed on the Blairs’ stall, weighing out English white cabbage, at 10p a pound, with Robin and Keith behind her.
This was the market’s last refurbishment until 2016 when the cash-strapped council earmarked £500,000 for repairs only for a structural survey to put the cost at nearer £4m. This led the council to, from 2017, involve a private company, Market Asset Management, in running the market.
Repairs were completed, but the grandiose plans to create a Temperate Garden in a new glazed space overlooking the Market Place have yet to materialise. Indeed, with the number of stalls dwindling while the space given over to food sheds and events has increased, the building has come to look less and less like a Victorian indoor market.
Robin Blair on his fruit and veg stall in 2012 displaying his newly awarded British Empire Medal for his services to market trading (Image: Unknown)
With Keith dying in 2013, when Robin passed away on July 6, it felt like a way of life was coming to an end. He was the last of the traditional market men.
The days when local food grown in local soil to be sold on the local market by a friendly local face, with a bit of craic thrown in for free, have been replaced by self-scan supermarkets, click and collect shopping and internet home deliveries.
It is amazing that the Blairs, a great Darlington institution, have lasted so long but yesterday was their last day of trading after 151 years. No one can tell what the covered market will look like in another 151 years but it seems inevitable that the pace of change will be even greater than that which four generations of Blairs have served their way through.